The Asus PadFone was one of the most interesting devices launched in the past two years, embedding all that a traveler would have needed: a phone and a laptop hybrid, in one package. Just like in the case of the Asus Transformer, the company gave signs of ingeniou\sity and at first, we thought that the product would sell like hot buns. Sadly, it was not its destiny, but Asus is willing to take another shot with the just-introduced PadFone 2.

The PadFone 2 comes a short while after the original model managed to finally reach retail stores, and this is mostly because the company has to have a product that it can be accounted as a worthy competitor against devices such as the Samsung Galaxy S3 and the iPhone 5. Maintaining the market trend, the newest PadFone comes with a bigger display, a better camera, a thinner and classier design, faster components and more to sparkle the audience.

Will you bet your money on this unusual concept?

Asus PadFone 2 Specifications and Features

In the way Asus presented PadFone 2 for this season, we dare to believe, hopefully not in vain, like the last time, that the product will actually do some waves on the market. Maintaining the concept first introduced by the Motorola Atrix and its laptop dock into the mainstream world, the Asus Padfone 2 dares to amaze the audience with these specifications:

Performances: Qualcomm APQ8064 Snapdragon chipset with a quad-core 1.5 GHz Krait CPU and an Adreno 320 as the GPU. Also it has 2GM of RAM.

Battery: Li-Ion with 2140 mAh which offers up to 16 hours of talk time

Connectivity: LTE, NFC, GPS, Bluetooth 4.0, microUSB 2.0, MHL

What about the laptop dock thingy?

In the trend of the late 2012, Asus has tailored the PadFone 2 laptop docking station slash hybrid tablet to be significantly slimmer, shinier and more appealing. Several changes have been made from the first version, the phone now connecting in a vertical position (to be not read as standing, the phone will be attached at the back of the dock as always) and the battery capacity has been trimmed down to 5000 mAh, from 6600, for design issues. The 10.1 inch size of the display has remained unchanged, also the resolution.

PadFone 2 Release Date and Price

The PadFone 2 is said to land its vessels until the end of this year for Europe and Asia, and availability for other countries will surely be announced soon. While a fixed release date is yet to be unveiled, we do have a price for the assembly. The 32GB version of the PadFone 2 will sell for a whopping €799 (a bit too much for our taste), while the 64GB version is expected to cost €899 – all with the dock included. The products will ship in two nuances, black and white, and there are leaks about a keyboard dock as well.

Alex Serban Feature Writer Alex holds an engineering degree in Telecommunications and has been covering technology as a writer since 2009. Customization is his middle name and he doesn’t like to own stock model gadgets. When he’s away from the keyboard, simpler things like hiking, mountain climbing and having a cold drink make his day.